First Snow
by Miss-Murdered
Summary: The first snow fall brings together Victor and Yuuri in a world where they shouldn't fall in love but do. Fairy tale style AU.


Pairings/Warnings: Victuuri, fairy tale!AU, immortal!Victor, human!Yuuri, some implied smut/sexual content, mild angst

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It was the first snow that woke Victor from his slumber. It always was. As soon as he felt the chill filter through the earth and down to where he slept, Victor's eyes would flicker open and he would rise for the first time in months.

Bare, naked, he would walk through the forest and his feet would make tracks in the light fall of snow that littered the ground. He felt new born as he walked, relearning the paths among the trees, feeling the cold on his skin and listening to forest around him. Victor would take big breaths of air as he remembered the world he'd hibernated from and all that he had seen.

He remembered when the world was young and so was he. How it had been then. When he had danced with long shining silver hair and twisted and twirled through the freshly fallen snow. There had been others like him then, many others and he had made love with men and women like himself among the leaves and fallen in love with one or two of them.

But now he was alone. There was only him who was still part of the old magic. There was only him who roamed the forest in the dark, alone.

Victor now didn't run naked through the trees. Nor did his long hair cascade behind him. A grey robe covered his body and his hair was cut short. He was getting old, too old for this world and he wondered whether after this year's winter, he would go to sleep forever.

It was a human world now. And Victor didn't really belong in it. He was a memory of a time past and he should fade just like the first snow would.

But not yet. Not yet.

Victor walked through the forest, his curiosity piqued as it always was after his hibernation. He wondered what had happened while he slept. He wondered what would be different. Curiosity would be his downfall, others like him had said, yet Victor still lived and they had been ravaged by the passing of time. Perhaps his interest in life – human life – had kept him alive.

He dreamt about humans. About being human. About bleeding red and eating meat and living such a short life. Victor was older than mountains, born in the ice, and he found it somehow miraculous that human lives were lit and extinguished so quickly. There was some beauty in their briefness and Victor admired it more than his own seemingly never-ending existence.

It didn't take him long to find the signs of humanity. The forest was not like it used to be, it had receded again, and Victor reached out to touch trees that were no longer there, his memory of bark on his fingertips. It was always like this. And it no longer made Victor sad. He just accepted that the world was different and his forest was getting smaller until one day it was gone. Then he would mourn. Then he would die.

Yet it hadn't gone yet. So he could continue. If only for a bit longer.

Victor saw the houses appear, wooden and squat, and he paused before he approached. The light from the windows glittered on the snow and he saw trails of smoke reach to the sky from chimneys. He wondered what warmth was like. What it felt like to sit around a fire. And he walked closer, cautiously, his instincts telling him to retreat back into the wood. Victor was born of ice and snow. Not of warmth. But he followed the warm, his bare feet digging into the snow until he arrived at something peculiar.

Water. But steaming water. Not like the streams or the rivers or the lakes that Victor had known. It was warm. And someone was in that water, bathing alone, and Victor watched them, his old eyes taking them all in.

He was an adult though young. Victor found it hard to guess an age as humans were so strange to him. Yet even though Victor couldn't guess an age, he did know that it was a male and that he was beautiful. He glistened, his hair was slicked back and his eyes looked up towards the snow that fell from the sky and Victor remembered a feeling he had long forgotten. Love. Lust. Desire. Something like that and he knew he should go back to the forest, go back to his lonely life and walk through the trees yet he didn't.

But he should have.

Victor visited every night. He found out he was called Yuuri. And he watched and watched and _watched_ until his days were filled with day dreams of him and nights were spent trying to see him in a scant and unsatisfying way.

His dreams of Yuuri were of them dancing, in ice and snow, together in the forest and they would be in time and they would be so damn beautiful. Then they would make love slowly with hands entwined and with open mouthed kisses. They would come together, perfectly, and lie together all night. It was a different life. A different world. It was wishful thinking and Victor was just an old fool.

He couldn't fall in love with a human. He could be the last of his kind. And yet he was falling in love. He was consumed.

Risks he shouldn't take were taken and Victor spoke to Yuuri, bathed with Yuuri, kissed Yuuri slowly and tried to stop his own desires from taking over. Yuuri was inexperienced. And while Yuuri didn't seem to suspect who or what he was, Victor was never safe. He never would be.

But he couldn't help himself. Yuuri tasted like foods he'd never tasted, like heady wines that he had drunk in his youth and Victor was drunk on those flavours on his lips. And when they made love for the first time, Victor was amazed at how beautiful Yuuri was, how his mouth formed a perfect "o" in climax, how he arched his back and moaned his name.

Yuuri was perfect. They were perfect. But it would only last the winter.

They spent every night together, their limbs wrapped around one another, their mouths pressed in hot kisses. Victor learned to love the hot springs, learned to want the warmth of the fire and the heat he found when he was buried deep inside Yuuri. He was losing his desire to walk in the woods and let his feet delve into the snow covered earth. He was becoming like a human. And at times, he almost thought he was.

But then he would remember and feel old. And he would remember that this was fleeting and he would bite back the bitter tears that threatened to fall.

The time passed unrelenting and Spring arrived and Victor felt the need for his slumber, deep in the heart of the forest. He didn't want to explain, didn't want to leave Yuuri but he had to. And he knew why his kind should not fall in love with a human. As it scarred them, destroyed them, made them want to live a different life. A life that was not theirs.

And so Victor left. He left while Yuuri slept. Pressed a gentle kiss to his forehead and left a note beside him. He would miss the warmth of Yuuri's smile, the heat of his body and sitting wrapped around one another in the hot springs. Yet he promised himself and Yuuri that he would come back.

On the note it said simply, in Victor's ornate script, _I'm sorry. I will be back with the first snow._

And Victor would. He would not fade like the rest of his kind. He would awaken from his slumber to see Yuuri again.


End file.
